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Delete Individual System Restore Points - WinXP - All
HOW DO I? : -
Does anyone know how to do, or of a program that safely does, an individual or selective removal of WinXP System Restore Points (other than creating other regular hard or soft system back-ups with System Restore turned off)?
WHY? : -
I'm sure there a lots of us who would love it to free up disk-space taken up by largely useless gigabytes of never to be used restores, but keep at least one known good restore point.
One of my PC's is pretty old and only has 40Gb Hard drive. If I install a larger Hard Drive it will invalidate my XP licences. Trust me on this, it has happened to me and some of my clients, and a right royal pain in the preverbial to get it revalidated for free (excluding phone calls, time, lost system, and so-forth and so-on) if at all. So this is not an option. External storage devices are also inappropriate as many programs must be written to the core drive.
I recently stopped the Restore Service and it returned over 8Gb of extra free space. There were about 60 restore points from the past 2 months alone. Any system changes, including minor software additions or deletions, trigger a restore point and more often than not, several in the one day.
I have the slider bar set to minimum on how much space to use, but it doesn't seem to abide by the rule and just keeps adding and adding.
I tried the in-built Clean Up program, but it was as useless as a lawnmower on Pluto.
However, I would like to keep only 2 + 1 permanent Restore points, one initial and one after loading drivers and known safe software etc., plus one latest that will overwrite itself at a designated time, or better still, manually.
I also have a PC with 1TB Hard Drive, with about 300Gb used space,which appears to suffer similar, if not more. I tested it by running SuperAntiSpyware with Ignore System Restore box unticked. The restore portion alone was still being scanned about an hour later. The rest of the system scan time was about the same as an antivirus scan, maybe a bit quicker. Don't get me wrong, this antispy program is terrific.
ANOTHER MS ISSUE : -
It also begs the question; Why has MS made this "Folder?" inaccessible to the average and not so average user? and ; Why are the user selective editing parameters so limited?
Scoffer
(still waiting for DX10 for XP zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz)
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IDK if it is bad or not so can someone help me...
On ccleaner the system restore I dont know if i should remove all of them...
or which ones to remove pleas help
THANKS
Depends on you, how many you want to remove, and which one. You will have to take the decision yourself. Against the individual restore points, their descriptions are there, which will help you make the decision. If you feel a restore point might be useful, like a restore point taken before installation of a program... then you can keep that restore point, in case you might want to revert back to it, in case of any problem. As a safety feature, the most recent restore point cannot be removed... so thats good too :).
Also, one request please, do not post email address in the comments. It is not safe to post email addresses in public forums. I have removed the email address which you had posted.
The easy way to make the System Volume Information folders on each drive accessible is to right click the folder in a file manager other than explorer, select Properties, then "Add" then type in "Owner". Then allow "Owner" full permission in the checkboxes below.
You can if need be delete the entire contents of the folder but don't delete the system volume information folder itself or it will be recreated on next reboot and you'll once again have to give yourself permission.
This is necessary if System Restore is turned off, for example if you're using a 3rd party drive imaging program to backup your system drive, in order to prevent System Restore from continuing to amass gigabytes of data.
CCleaner rocks! Who needs to try another programming project when it is so easy? ;-)
is there any way that we can do it from command prompt or using a script
Download the latest version of CCleaner 2.19.900. It now has a tool to delete individual restore points.
Once CCleaner is open click on 'Tools' on the left hand side then click on 'System Restore' and select any individual restore point and click on 'Remove'. It is only possible to remove one at a time. No more deleting all restore points except for the last one. I would never disable system restore completely because it is essential to use it for minor restores. Use disk imaging for a major restores.
Cheers
Thanks for that. CCleaner worked a treat.
I would still like to be able to just have the last restore point overwritten at my choosing rather than having to keep deleting all the new automatically created points.
But for now, CCleaner did the job well and is added to my "Excellent" program list.
Thanks again.
There is a simple way to delete all but the last System Restore Points. Go to Start Menu/All Programs/Accessories/System Tools/Disk Cleanup. Go to the 'More Options' tab. At the 'System Restore' section click on 'Clean up'. You will be asked (as always) if you are sure that you want to delete all but the latest System Restore Points. If you click 'Yes', they are gone.
By the way, System Restore only works with your System, not on your programs, or your data files. So if you got a separate partition for your Data files etc. you can disable System Restore for all drives, except for the one Windows is on. You can find that setting by right clicking the 'My Computer' icon, and choose 'Properties'. The System Restore tab gets you there.
Heinz Iten
Thanks Peter.
Anyone want a programming project to address this issue?
Maybe Windows7 will be a bit more Restore Friendly.
Going to the "Shops" to get yet another External Storage Thingo. Might try one of the external Universal Hard Drive docking stations. A 500GB+ USB Flash Dongle Thingamajig would be nice, when technology gets there.
Regards
Scoffer
You're not alone in finding System Restore unsatisfactory, but I'm afraid attempts to control it in the way you suggest tend to make it completely useless. A better solution perhaps, is to disable it completely and rely on disk imaging to an external drive:
http://www.techsupportalert.com/partitioning-hard-drives-3.htm
http://www.techsupportalert.com/best-free-drive-imaging-program.htm
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